She’s With the Band

Kelly Johnson is bartender and band liaison for 14/48 this weekend, so she’s got 2/3 of sex, drugs and rock and roll down.

As band liaison, it’s her job to get anything the musicians need. Most of the time, that means finding music, but it might mean finding sound effects, or even turning videos of “delightful water sounds to fall asleep to” into a sound file.

The most important thing for the music files is to get ones that are easy to play for pianos and guitars, in a printable format, and low cost (or even better, free) and she admitted the requirements aren’t always in that order.

She said the best (and hardest) part of the job is how quickly the band comes up with a music match for a scene. She described the group’s music knowledge as “encyclopedic,” which measn they can come up with a song that will fit the play’s needs almost immediately.

“They tell what you need rapid fire.”

She’s also been impressed by their ability to come up with creative solutions. “I just heard them take something baroque and make it sound like outer space.”

The other thing she’s noticed with the band is how often they don’t finish their sentences. It’s pretty common to hear:

“So I was thinking about–”

“Yep, me too,”

“So the”

“Yep.”

And then the band takes off a again with a new fix, and Kelly keeps looking for the sheet music for another pieces’s sheet music.